OGC and OSGeo Sign Memorandum of Understanding

Wayland, Mass., January 7, 2009 - In Valencia, Spain, at the December Technical Committee meetings of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), the OGC and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to coordinate in advancing open geospatial standards (OGC's mission) and open source geospatial software and data (OSGeo's mission).

Mark Reichardt, CEO and President of the OGC, explained that, "Openness benefits markets. Vendors of proprietary software have found that today's more open and complex "business ecosystem," which includes both open source software and open standards, is good for their businesses. It's also good for technology users. It makes sense for the OGC to work with the OSGeo."

Open source software is software that has been designed and developed in an open, community process. The OGC's open standards are similarly developed in an open, community process, but they are specifications (for interfaces, encodings and best practices), not software.

Arnulf Christl, President of OSGeo, said, "We look forward to collaborating with the OGC to identify open source technologies that can be used as reference implementations for OGC standards and to identify standards requirements that result from our open source geospatial software development programs."

The MOU provides for the assignment of up to six one-year Individual Memberships in the OGC. Memberships will be selected by OSGeo and are subject to OGC qualifications for Individual Membership.

The OSGeo is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open source geospatial technologies and data.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.